


Chapter Four: Klaus

by obscurityofphylum



Series: Extra Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Drug Abuse, Hurt Klaus Hargreeves, Implied/Referenced Sexual Abuse, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus Hargreeves Needs Help, No Smut, Other, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Self Harm, Suicide, no beta we die like ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:29:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24880849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obscurityofphylum/pseuds/obscurityofphylum
Summary: Klaus, despite being the middle child, had always been the smallest. I think the others all had some subconscious desire to protect him from the start. His nickname was Mouse, given by Allison because of his size. He was colorful. Reginald hadn’t dulled him to the same hue of the rest of that dreary house yet.Chapter Four of Extra Ordinary, Vanya reflects on her perspective of her brother Klaus’s childhood.
Series: Extra Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1800355
Comments: 12
Kudos: 266





	Chapter Four: Klaus

_Klaus, despite being the middle child, had always been the smallest. I think the others all had some subconscious desire to protect him from the start. His nickname was Mouse, given by Allison because of his size. He was colorful. Reginald hadn’t dulled him to the same hue of the rest of that dreary house yet._

_Number Four was more vibrant than the rest of us. He was always laughing and joking, doing something to get on our nerves (even though we could never really be mad at him) he was the closest to Two, Three, and Six. We never really spoke, but I spectated as he tumbled downhill after our father discovered his powers and added him to his ever-growing collection of playthings and oddities, a collection I was never included in._

_Klaus’s powers were discovered shortly after our fourth birthday, when our father figured out that his imaginary friends were anything but imaginary. I think the ghosts frightened him. He became skittish and wary of everyone and everything. And, in true Reginald Hargreeves fashion, our father decided that he needed to be broken of his fear._

_It started with the mausoleum. He was eight the first time our father had dragged him away from the dinner table for ‘special training.’ The image of Klaus, happily skipping after our father, so gleeful at the thought of being worthy of Reginald’s attention for once, will forever haunt me. No matter how spirited he was as a child, he wasn’t immune to the desperate need to please our father._

_He always came back mute. He was horrified. Mom would give him his bath first the nights that he was put through special training, and we all knew not to complain. We were too scared to complain, seeing what we always thought to be our happiest brother like this. He would tremble for hours, staying pressed tightly against Grace’s chest with his teeth still chattering._

_We all had nightmares, but I think his were always different than ours. He’d wet the bed almost every night, and I think Dad getting on him for it scared him even more than the ghosts. Most nights, he’d crawl into the bed of Three, Two, or Six. Every once in a while, I’d wake up to a mop of curly brown hair under my nose, and the soft, shaky breathing of Klaus crying himself to sleep. We never said anything to each other about it at breakfast._

_He was the troublemaker. He was always getting caned for small offenses, and never seemed to learn. But, there was also a selfless side of him. If one of the others (especially Ben) messed up, Klaus would take the blame, even if he was already sore from his own mistakes being corrected. Our father was never warm to him, and sometimes I wonder if that was Klaus’s own way of trying to get some kind of attention we all craved from him._

_He ran away for the first time when we were eleven. It was the morning after a mausoleum trip, and he must’ve slipped through his bedroom window before breakfast. Reginald looked angrier than I’ve ever seen him when he came back from the city social worker’s office, Klaus in tow. Klaus just flashed us a grin while he was marched up to his room. He wasn’t allowed to come down for meals for the next three days._

_From then on, he had a lot more instances of running away. The police knew to just bring him back home. A part of me respects him for being brave enough to try to leave so many times. I certainly wasn’t._

_He was too feminine for Reginald’s liking. Allison painted his nails, he tried to get by with wearing skirts instead of the uniform shorts (which never worked) but Reginald could never break him. He had too much personality._

_The drug abuse started when we were twelve. He was running down the stairs in Grace’s heels when he toppled over, his face hitting the wooden banister hard. He broke his jaw. Mom had him on morphine for a week after it happened, and that was the start of it._

_I don’t think he knew how obvious it was sometimes. Ashes from blunts peppered on his windowsill, the constant smell of marijuana radiating off of his clothes, white powdery residue on the nightstand in his room. He was high most of our teen years. It was an escape for him, he didn’t have to swallow the sharp words of our father as long as he swallowed the pills, and I guess the pills were much easier._

_The running away continued, except it got more and more dangerous. He would disappear for days on end. Klaus was the first one to discover the real world outside the academy walls, and the real world wasn’t kind to him. He stumbled out of the Academy’s wire cage and into a lion’s den. But, being Klaus, he craved the danger of it all._

_Sometimes I wonder if he had pyromania. He was constantly bent over a cigarette lighter, igniting pieces of paper or scraps of fabric from Mom’s sewing. He seemed engulfed by the light of the flame, and the way they danced. I’d watch from the doorway, as Klaus, unaware of my presence, would stare into the orange glow. His pupils were always huge, reflecting the flames dancing on the unfortunate objects he decided to make the fire’s victims. It was something he could control, and in the Umbrella Academy, control of your surroundings was in high demand and came in small quantities; For Klaus, control came out n the form a cigarette lighter._

_Klaus tried to commit suicide a couple times before we were thirteen. Most of them were overdoses, where one of us would find Klaus on his bedroom floor, seizing and choking on a mixture of his own blood and vomit. Reginald never truly cared when it happened, instead chastising him for his weakness._

_When Five first disappeared, Klaus didn’t take it very hard. Him and Five had never gotten along too well. But Reginald wanted to make sure Five wasn’t dead, so Klaus was finally useful to him in some aspect. Our father made him sit in front of a ouija board for hours until his hands were shaking and he was exhausted from trying to summon Five. I think it just made him resent Five even more, for running away and actually succeeding._

_Unsurprisingly, none of us received mental health support after Five’s disappearance. It was obvious from the way Mom’s sewing scissors would turn up on the bathroom counter, metal crusted with dried blood. Klaus wore long sleeves most of our teenage years, even though there was almost no point in hiding it anymore._

_For a few years, Klaus only existed in the form of body glitter, club lights, the sweat of bodies pressed too closely together, and spoons over cigarette lighters. I barely ever saw him from the ages of fifteen to sixteen._

_My room was right next to his, and I’d stay up to make sure he came home most nights. When he did actually come home, he was never alone. Men who were at least ten years older than him would hold him close, whispering sweet things to him which Klaus only giggled at under his haze of narcotics._

_They would get handsy with him. Sometimes Klaus would say yes. Most times he wouldn’t. That never influenced their behavior. They were so hellbent on corrupting him, and I can only imagine what happened when I wasn’t looking out my window._

_Klaus dove into the world of sexuality head-first, into a whirlpool of broken promises and hands around his throat. But no matter how rough the men got with him, he always craved more. He craved their validation, more than anything else. He was standing above a pool of sharks, cutting himself open so they could smell his blood. And when that wasn’t enough, he jumped in with them._

_I can’t blame him. He was never eager to please Reginald, but he still lacked the affection that a father should’ve given. Klaus needed to be seen, to be heard. He was far too loud to be ignored, and in his eyes, the only people who would listen to him were the people who stole away into bars at night, predators with an eye for young innocence that Klaus had far too much of._

_Ben died when we were sixteen. Klaus saw his ghost before he even knew he was dead, and I think that traumatized him. Klaus and Ben were always close to each other, so Ben’s death broke him more than our father’s parenting ever could._

_He slept entire days away, shooting whatever he could find into his veins and letting it knock him out without any regard for his life. He lost a part of himself when Ben died. Our father stopped trying to make him go on missions, not out of sympathy, but because Reginald Hargreeves chose his battles based on their importance, and Klaus was never the most important to him._

_The drugs gave him psychosis. He was angry all the time when he was awake. He’d yell at us for hours on end, and get into hour-long screaming matches with Reginald constantly._

_He started harming himself. He’d dig his fingernails into his thighs and arms until they created gashes. Most nights, Diego and Luther would have him pinned to his bedroom floor to stop him from trying to hurt himself, while Allison would sit by his head, playing with his hair and trying to soothe his sobs and screaming._

_Two months after Ben’s death, Klaus sliced his wrists open. Allison found him in the bathtub, his body paling as his blood overflowed and stained the porcelain tiles of the floor. Dad sent him away to a treatment facility for eleven months._

_He got out two weeks before our seventeenth birthday, with the words ‘HELLO’ and ‘GOODBYE’ tattooed on his palms from pen ink and IV needles. The tattoos he’d given himself in the hospital were just one more act of rebellion towards Reginald._

_Every now and then, we’d hear him talking to empty air. We assumed it was just his mind slipping away from him because of the drugs, but I was always doubtful. I heard him say Ben’s name to empty chairs and desolate windowsills one too many times to think it was just an odd coping mechanism._

_I left the house first, followed by Diego a week later, Allison a couple months after Diego, and eventually Klaus only a month after Allison’s departure. I don’t think he could bear being in that big house with just Luther, Mom, Dad, and Pogo._

_Klaus was just another experiment that Reginald managed to break in one way or another. But he survived. Every now and then I’ll see flashes of familiar curly brown hair disappearing behind buildings, or a hint of a tattooed hand in an alley. These little reminders of him give me hope that maybe we’re all healing, in our own ways. Even if our father broke us, we can still pick up the pieces._


End file.
